New Year Book Tag!

Last year I celebrated by doing this book tag and I decided to revisit it to start my posting for 2019, especially as I have been missing in action for a while.

I think it originated from Bookables which is a You Tube channel. The questions also echo a few posts I’ve seen from other bloggers about books they’ve not managed to squeeze into 2018 so it seems like a good tag take part in to kick off the new year!

How many books are you planning to read in 2019?

My Goodreads Challenge has been set at 130 for the last few years and I plan to set the same goal in 2019 as this works out at 10 books per month and a bonus 10 for holidays.

I read a total of 146 books in 2018n which is slightly down on 2017’s total of 150 but not as much as I expected since I felt I’ve read very little in the last couple of months.

Name five books you didn’t get to read this year but want to make a priority in 2018?

Only five?? Well here goes!

In no particular order Day of the Dead by Nicci French, the eighth and final book in the Frieda Klein series

Blurb

At long last, a final reckoning is coming for Frieda Klein…

On a north London high street, a runaway vehicle crashes to a halt, but the man in the driving seat was murdered a week earlier.
On Hampstead Heath, a bonfire blazes: in the flames lies the next victim.
As autumn leaves fall, a serial killer runs amok in the capital, playing games with the police. The death toll is rising fast, and the investigation is floundering.
But this is no ordinary killer, and every new victim is intended as a message to just one woman – psychologist Freida Klein.
And the message is very simple.
You’re next. . .
Frieda Klein’s duel with her dark nemesis is finally coming to a climax – and only one can make it out alive.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper, the follow up to The Dry which was on 2018 list of books to get to in 2018 – I did but I’m still trailing!

Blurb

Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along a muddy track.
Only four come out on the other side.

The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and encourage teamwork and resilience. At least, that’s what the corporate retreat website advertises.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker, Alice Russell. Because Alice knew secrets, about the company she worked for and the people she worked with.

The four returning women tell Falk a tale of fear, violence and fractured trust during their days in the remote Australian bushland. And as Falk delves into the disappearance of Alice, he begins to suspect some dangers ran far deeper than anyone knew.

I fell in love with Kate Atkinson’sLife After Life which I read last summer and so I’m determined to read another book featuring some of the same characters A God in Ruins in 2019.

Blurb

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.

I also need to read The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon having been delighted by Three Things about Elsie early in 2018, sadly my copy of her earlier book went walkabout to my daughter’s house and has only recently returned.

Blurb

England,1976.

Mrs Creasy is missing and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands.

And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined…

My final choice is a book that was published in December 2018, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley.

Blurb

Everyone’s invited. Everyone’s a suspect.

Nine friends ring in the New Year in the remote Scottish Highlands.
As the curtain falls on another year, the celebrations begin.

The next 48 hours see the friends catching up, reminiscing over past stories, scratching old wounds. . . And guarding friendship-destroying secrets.

The clock has barely struck 12 when a broken body is found in the snow.

Not an accident – a murder among friends.

When a thick blizzard descends, the group are trapped.
No-one can get in. And no-one can get out.
Not even the killer.

Name a genre you want to read more of?

I adore crime fiction but in 2018 I joined The Classics Club and so my aim is to read more books from the 50 books I’ve chosen for the challenge. So far I’ve had a pretty good run of books but along with all other reading this tailed off dramatically towards the end of last year.

Three non book related goals for 2019?

I haven’t really made any resolutions for 2019 but I will continue to strive to be healthier and happier.

What’s a book you’ve had forever that you still need to read?

So many but one of the non-fiction books I really want to read that I’ve had for an age is Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise which I bought in September 2013 is high on the list.

3rd October

Blurb

The nineteenth century saw repeated panics about sane individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums. With the rise of the ‘mad-doctor’ profession, English liberty seemed to be threatened by a new generation of medical men willing to incarcerate difficult family members in return for the high fees paid by an unscrupulous spouse or friend.

Sarah Wise uncovers twelve shocking stories, untold for over a century and reveals the darker side of the Victorian upper and middle classes – their sexuality, fears of inherited madness, financial greed and fraudulence – and chillingly evoke the black motives at the heart of the phenomenon of the ‘inconvenient person’.

One word that you’re hoping 2019 will be?

Fun… I am getting married in 2019 and greatly looking forward to celebrating with our friends and family.

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41 thoughts on “New Year Book Tag!”

Great to see you back with us. I can’t imagine ever being able to read that many books in one year – I’d have to give up everything else like the gym, yoga, volunteering work etc. You must be superwoman since I think you also have a full time job????
Anyway, this sentence “I also need to read The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon having been delighted by Three Things about Elsie early in 2018, ” is one I could easily have written, This book is on my list too

Hi, it’s good to be back after a month long break partly enforced by a lack of time to read let alone blog. I do have a full time job and can confirm I’m no superwoman so constantly trying to fit everything in!
I do hope we both enjoy the Goats & Sheep

Welcome back, Cleo! I stopped by earlier because I hadn’t seen your posts in my inbox and wanted to make sure I was still following you. I enjoyed your tag and you have some really great books to read. A lot of new ones for me:) Happy New Year!

Lovely to have you back, Cleo! I really like this New Year’s tag. It gives a person a chance to think about how the reading for the year will go. And the questions are really interesting, too. You’ve chosen several books that interest me (the Atkinson, the Foley, and the Wise, in particular, and of course, the Nicci French). I hope you’ll have a great reading year, and I’m very excited for your upcoming wedding!

I’ve missed your posts Cleo, good to see you back. I have 4 of your 5 still to read – we’ll see who gets to them first! (clue, probably won’t be me :)). Congratulations – exciting times for you this year x

Welcome back, Cleo. I still have Jane Harper’s books on my TBR pile, I’m really hoping to read The Dry in 2019, I keep hearing so many good things about it. I read The Hunting Party last year and thought it was brilliant, hope you enjoy it as well.

Nice to see you back in action! Yeah, those classics are great but they don’t half cut the time available for keeping up with new releases! Have you selected the books you’ll be taking on your honeymoon yet? 😉

Oh, I’m so delighted to see a post from you! I certainly understand about life and breaks and not posting though. Hope your holidays were happy and congrats on your upcoming wedding in 2019! As to your books you’d like to read – I’m really wanting to read Jane Harper’s new book and have it preordered. I’ve read that last Frieda Klein book – very good – sad to see the series end – can’t wait to see what they will write next. And I read an advance copy of The Hunting Party – hmmm…I’m likely not going to share a review, but I’ll be curious what you think about it. Very locked room vibe to it. Take care and I’ll always be around to see what you’d like to share when you like to share it. 🙂

Thank you Kay – I just needed to step away and to get back to reading some books – very hard to blog about books when you aren’t reading haha.
I just read your best of 2018 reads so even more keen to get to read the ending of Frieda Klein’s story and more curious about The Hunting Party!
Thank you so much for your kind words, I knew it was time to come back when I realised how much I missed my blogging buddies! 🙂

Oooooh, you’re getting married! Congratulations and enjoy, 2019 will be a year you remember for the rest of your life 😉❤️ I got married back in 2017, and it feels like yesterday – I realised on 1st January that I should probably stop calling myself a newlywed hahaha. I’m with you on many of these bookish goals – I’d love to read Jane Harper’s books this year (I’ve got The Dry burning a hole in my TBR stack!), and I’d love to keep up the momentum I built in 2018 of reading more classics. Looking forward to seeing how you go, happy reading!

Cleo, so nice to hear from you! You can see the goals 2019 holds for me. We’ll see just how it pans out. We now live in Spain. That’s why I didn’t blog much last year. I had to figure out how to get from owning a house in California to getting residency in Spain. We love it here in Marbella.